Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (98 page)

The Queen then suffered a convulsion, and for the next three hours was ‘speechless, motionless and insensible’. The doctors initially identified this as ‘a fit of apoplexy’, or what is now called a stroke, almost certainly a correct diagnosis. Lupus sufferers have a heightened risk of stroke, being vulnerable to inflammation in the arteries of the brain and its surrounding tissues. Alternatively, a stroke could have been caused by a blood clot in one of the brain’s arteries. Later her physicians revised their view regarding the nature of her last illness, deciding that a ‘violent agitation of the Queen’s spirits’ had caused a ‘translation of the gouty humour from the knee and the foot, first upon the nerves and then upon the brain’, with fatal results.
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The Duchess of Ormonde was in waiting at Kensington that morning, and at once alerted her husband that the Queen was seriously ill. He and his fellow Lords of the Committee rushed to Kensington, where Lord Harcourt entered her closet and ‘to his thinking saw her dead in a chair, with her ladies and physicians about that’. He approached the comatose figure, but she gave no sign of recognition. When he rejoined his colleagues they agreed they must nominate a new Lord Treasurer, for if Oxford was not replaced he would be entitled to serve as one of the Regents charged with overseeing the handover of power.
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They unanimously agreed that the Duke of Shrewsbury was the best choice.

Hearing that the Queen had recovered consciousness, the ministers went in and informed her of their decision. She indicated she approved and, as she handed Shrewsbury his staff of office, she reportedly bade him to ‘use it for the good of her people’. Whether she was capable of articulating these words may be doubted: one account notes that after coming to, the Queen had ‘her understanding perfect, but from that time answered nothing but aye and no’. A courtier heard she was too weak to give Shrewsbury his staff unaided, ‘my Lord Chancellor holding her hand to direct it to the Duke’.
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For the rest of the day the Queen drifted in and out of consciousness, while the physicians subjected her to the usual deeply unpleasant treatments. As well as enduring ‘bleeding, vomiting and blistering’, the Queen had her head shaved so that hot irons could be applied. Garlic was placed on her feet, and her soles were blistered all over. When, towards evening, she complained of the pain this caused her, it was considered an excellent sign.
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The Queen at least derived some comfort from the presence of the Duchess of Somerset, or so Hamilton thought. He was impressed by ‘the soft courteous way of the Duchess’s speaking to the Queen, and her Majesty’s look and motion of her face in receiving it, though so ill’. Although the Queen did not utter a word, he could see the ‘solid inward satisfaction’ her Groom of the Stole’s attentions afforded her.
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Whether Lady Masham provided her mistress with comparable support is not clear. One person heard that on 30 July she ‘left the Queen for three hours to go and ransack for things at St James’s’. Another courtier was sceptical of this report, as he believed Abigail to be genuinely grief-stricken. On the other hand, the Mashams’ behaviour the previous December gives some credence to the story. At seven o’clock on Christmas morning, only hours after Anne had fallen dangerously ill, Samuel Masham had woken up the Clerk of the Signet Office with a request to make out his patent as a Remembrancer to the Exchequer, a post worth £1,500 a year.
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Having possibly had another stroke about three in the afternoon of 30 July, Anne continued all that night ‘in a kind of lethargic dozing’. Next morning all the physicians despaired of her life. As a last resort, they invited Dr Radcliffe to Kensington but he excused himself, not wanting to be saddled with the blame for her death. He said that apart from the fact he was ill himself, he knew she would not want him there. This earned him the fury of many people, who wrongly believed he could have saved her life.
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A little later on 31 July, the Queen briefly rallied. She took some broth and asked those at the bedside to pray for her. Her pulse picked up, giving her doctors some hope, ‘but this was but the flash of a dying light’. She died at seven-thirty in the morning of Sunday 1 August without having been able to receive communion from John Robinson, Bishop of London, who, throughout her final hours, had been waiting to administer the sacrament.
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As the Queen neared her end, executive power was wielded by the Privy Council. All the current ministers served on this, and they were joined by former colleagues such as the Dukes of Argyll and Somerset. They kept Baron Bothmer informed of Anne’s condition, and on 31 July invited him to bring in the black box containing the list of Regents nominated by the Elector. To ensure that everything went smoothly, the Councillors ‘sat … all day and night, taking it by turns to go out and refresh themselves’.
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In the last months of Anne’s life, Whig soldiers such as James Stanhope, who feared that the Jacobites would try to seize power if she became terminally ill, had taken a series of precautions. An ‘Association’ had been formed to purchase arms, and its members were pledged to take action at the least sign of Jacobite aggression. The Whig drinking society, the Kit Cat Club, had also arranged that a Major-General in the Foot Guards would ‘seize the Tower upon the first appearance of danger’. In Scotland, similar steps had been taken by supporters of the Protestant Succession.
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All these measures turned out to be unnecessary, as nothing occurred to impede George Ludwig’s accession. To be on the safe side the Council called out the militia, put the fleet on alert, and asked the States General to stand by to send military aid. Ports were closed, Catholics’ weapons were confiscated, and the heralds instructed to hold themselves in readiness to proclaim King George. No one created any difficulties. The Duke of Buckingham, whom the French had believed would be the first to welcome the Pretender, fulsomely assured Baron Bothmer that every care was being taken to secure his master’s succession. Bolingbroke sought to outdo all his colleagues in expressing loyalty towards the new King, and within days of Anne’s death both he and the Duke of Ormonde cautioned the French envoy Iberville that the Pretender must do nothing to endanger the kingdom’s repose.
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One observer remarked, ‘I think to contemplate my Lord Bolingbroke’s fortune would cure ambition’, since what had seemed a glittering future now lay in ruins. Bolingbroke himself wrote ruefully, ‘What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us! … I have lost all by the death of the Queen but my spirit’. Proclaiming himself ‘pierced with pain’ at the demise of his royal mistress, he told Iberville that had she lived but six weeks longer, ‘things would have been put in such a state that there would have been nothing to fear from what has just happened’.
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In reality it is far from certain how his administration would have fared. He had struggled to find suitable men to serve in the ministry, and it is doubtful how much support they would have commanded when Parliament mounted an enquiry into Bolingbroke’s business affairs.

While Anne’s life seeped away the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were being tossed about at sea. When their yacht entered Dover harbour on the morning of 1 August, a messenger came on board and informed them she had died. A few days later Marlborough entered London in what many people considered distasteful pomp. His coach was preceded by servants shouting, ‘Behold your liberator, behold the restorer of
national glory!’ A cheeky butcher called out that Marlborough came too late, as the country already had a new monarch.
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George I was proclaimed King in London at two in the afternoon of 1 August. Iberville heard there were few cheers. On the other hand, the crowd displayed marked hostility towards Oxford and Bolingbroke, who were both present. The two men were hissed and halters thrown through their coach windows to symbolise the fate they deserved.
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The Queen had made no mention of her half brother on her deathbed and, now she was gone, his prospects could not have been more bleak. It was unfortunate for him that when she became ill, the Duke of Berwick was absent at the siege of Barcelona, but probably this did not make much difference, for the French were not prepared to offer their royal protégé any help. As soon as he heard his sister was dead, James rushed to Paris incognito, but Louis XIV refused to see him. Torcy was instructed ‘to persuade him to return from whence he came’, and to intimate that if he did not go voluntarily, ‘they should be … obliged to compel him’. Back in Lorraine, the young man wrote to Torcy that he was devastated that all was quiet in Great Britain, ‘but since that is so, patience is the sole resource’.
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A draft will of the Queen’s was found, drawn up a couple of years earlier, but never finalised. Although it contained a series of bequests, the names had been left blank. She did leave £2,000 to the poor, and George I honoured this, despite being under no legal obligation to do so. Apparently the Queen had been wrongly told that to validate her will, she had to have it sealed by the Lord Chancellor, and had never summoned up the energy to do this. This was particularly disappointing for Lady Masham, whose financial situation was assumed to be ‘deplorable’. The Duchess of Somerset fared better, for as Groom of the Stole tradition entitled her to a share of the Queen’s property. According to the Duchess of Marlborough, the Duchess of Somerset asserted her right to a pair of valuable pendant earrings she claimed to have been in Anne’s pocket when she died. The matter was resolved in December 1714 when she was awarded £3,000 ‘in consideration of her relinquishing certain goods, plate and other things of the late Queen’.
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Every effort was made to locate a more satisfactory will, but the search yielded nothing other than a mysterious sealed bundle of papers. Bolingbroke had earlier spoken of this to Iberville, claiming that the Queen always slept with it under her pillow. Despite speculation that it contained letters from the Pretender, there is no reason to think so. Written on the packet in the Queen’s own hand was a request to burn it
unopened after her death. After consulting Bothmer, the Lords of the Regency carried out her wishes.
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There was huge relief that predictions of civil unrest had proved so wide of the mark. One person commented, ‘The event of the Queen’s death was generally expected to be attended with confusion; nothing like it has occurred’. Daniel Malthus noted joyfully on 6 August that ‘a dark cloud which I feared hung over our heads seems to be blown over’, while Bolingbroke wrote in wonderment, ‘Sure there never was yet so quiet a transition from one government to another’. The sense that the country had escaped lightly meant there was little sadness at Anne’s passing. Indeed, when it had been prematurely reported on 31 July that she had died, the news was welcomed and stocks had risen. Sir John Perceval argued, ‘This could not be upon her Majesty’s account, for all the world must have loved her’, but the feeling that a great cataclysm had been averted explained the buoyant mood. Even known Jacobites made no demonstration in favour of the Pretender. Instead ‘They contented themselves with showing regret for the Queen without any sign of affection for him, happy to be safeguarded from civil war’.
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As soon as it became clear that Anne was unlikely to recover, the Council had written to the Elector, imploring him to come at once to England. However, when he heard from Bothmer how calm the country was, he judged there to be no urgency. He did not arrive in his new kingdom till 18 September, by which time Anne’s funeral had already taken place.

In her draft will the Queen had ‘directed her burial to be in the same manner and place with her late royal consort’. The funeral was classified as ‘private’, but it still cost £10,579. The day before the ceremony, her purple-draped coffin was borne from Kensington to Westminster in a funeral chariot with ‘very large strong wheels’, drawn by eight stout horses caparisoned in purple hoods. A vigil was then held in the Prince’s chamber of the Palace of Westminster. The Duchess of Somerset was officially designated chief mourner, with her husband as one of her two male supporters. The Queen’s ladies-in-waiting and maids of honour were also present, and fourteen Countesses further swelled the ranks of attendants. All had been issued with twenty-six yards of black crape to wear as mourning veils.
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The interment itself took place on the evening of 24 August. A hundred Yeomen of the Guard were on duty, dressed in specially made black coats. The service was conducted by a prelate whom the Queen had particularly disliked, Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, in his
capacity as Dean of Westminster. More to her taste would have been the singing by the thirty Children of the Chapel Royal, all equipped with new pocket handkerchiefs. Although by no means all her household servants were issued with black garments, the accounts note that a special mourning livery was fashioned for Samuel Stubbs, the Queen’s ratkiller.
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Onlookers were struck by the size of the Queen’s coffin, ‘even bigger than that of the Prince … who was known to be a very fat and bulky man’. The heavy burden was carried by fourteen carpenters, in black coats and caps, with six Dukes performing a more honorific role as pall-bearers. The last of the Stuart monarchs was laid to rest on the right-hand side of the Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey, next to her beloved husband, as she had stipulated. The corpses of her children lay nearby, in a vault beneath the tomb of their forebear, Mary Queen of Scots. Free at last of all her pain, care and sorrow, this most conscientious of rulers had discharged her final duty. Despite his sadness at the loss of his ‘dear mistress’, her physician Dr Arbuthnot could only account it a mercy, knowing that ‘sleep was never more welcome to a weary traveller than death was to her’.
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